Gmail EXACT PHRASE search

mcginnmp · 02-17-2022 05:56 AM

Unlike the ONLY label I am provided 😞

This is about Gmail

Why can I not do an exact phrase Gmail search.

I understand 'fuzzy' search for those who don't remember exact phrases.

But this is ridiculous and completely useless for those of us who DO remember exact phrases and are looking for something specific. Please reinstate quote / double-quotes so that exact phrases can be used.

Thank you

icrew

You might want to post this to the Feature Ideas section here. See https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Feature-Ideas/gh-p/workspace-ideas-group, and https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/custom/page/page-id/Workspace-Feature-Ideas-FAQ for how to get access. This will allow it to be upvoted by others and possibly considered as a future feature enhancement.

If you are submitting a feature idea, be sure to explain the problem that you're trying to solve with the feature idea, not just the idea itself. For example, saying "when my users are trying to do 'A', they often get confused by the fact that the buttons to do 'X' and to do 'Y' look quite similar to each other, which leads to this unintended consequence" is far more likely to get fixed than a feature idea that just says "change the color of the button 'Y'".

Cheers,

Ian

mcginnmp

Will try feature idea.
However, this used to be a thing before (not sure why it was removed).
Google still has this on their support page..
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7190?hl=en
[image: image.png]

So it's not new.

*Michael McGinn*
FAN Google Apps System Administrator
Cloud Program Management Office (IRM/OPS/CPMO)
Department of State
SA-9, LL1

mcginnmp@fan.gov

StephenHind

@mcginnmp I just did an exact phrase search earlier today so it's still working for me: can you give an example of what you're trying to do?

mcginnmp

As you can see in the example, doing a full phrase search only partially worked. In this example I ONLY want email where the full phrase 'FAN migration' appears.

StephenHind

@mcginnmp

Your screenshot shows that it's highlitging FAN but also FAN Migrations so every item foiund in that particular screenshot has been found for "FAN Migration" but also highlioghts FAN as well: this particular screenshot doesn;t show the search for exat phrase isn't working but shows the highlighting may be highlighting too much.

Bilsky

This may be an older thread on this subject, but I want to post that the exact search is still not working in gmail. here is my example. searching for "4012696-3" in my mail gives me results that include either of those numbers, but not the "-" and it will even show me in mail when gmail indicates "3 more recipients".

It is ridiculous that you can't search an exact phrase here. Such a basic and needed function.

mcginnmp

Didn't work for me.

Because of where I work I am NOT going to give an exact example but a general one.

In the search field in Gmail type "Migration Documents" (notice the double-quotes)

Search results do not pull "Migration Documents", but instances of each individual word and email in which both words appear separately.

CBio

It is working for me. At a first glance it looks like a fuzzy search just because the result list does not have the exact phrase. However, if I go into the email itself the phrase shows up somewhere down below. "service notification" got 62 hits with quotes, 1000+ without.

hallielangley

If I search for "Indeed Application" and my search returns things with, "Indeed", "Application", or "Your application with Indeed has been submitted", then EXACT match is NOT working. It is heinous that this doesn't work.

yaniaular

Exact match is NOT working for me either. If I search for "from code", my search returns results with "from", "code" or "from code"

yaniaular

as

jzj

Yep. I keep getting spam not caught by Google. It always has a certain phrase that is not in any legitimate emails. I tried putting "word1 word2" in the filter search and it matches messages with just word1. Pretty frustratingly hilarious considering Google is the king of "search."

sdfasdfas

Same issue. So bad. Maybe I will need to move my business to iCloud. Anyone have other suggestions for alternatives?

EMc

I used to search my Gmail for file names that include the year. The search function is almost entirely useless to me now.

sdfasdfas

The irony that a company whose name is now used as a verb to mean search
has completely ruined the search function on its email service is palpable.

Soundy

Came here looking for a solution to this same issue... good to see I'm not alone.

I need to highlight emails that I'm tagged in - ie. searching "@firstname lastname".

As others have noted, my results show EVERY hit on "firstname", "lastname", and "firstname lastname"... including my own signature. Whiich basically lumps in every email I've sent.

Just... yeah, beyond useless.

jacrys

Yeah, this is ridiculous. I am searching for "Bank Of America", and getting ANTYTHING with Bank, ANYTHING with Of, ANYTHING with America, ANYTHING with us, and ANYTHING with Bank Of America.

If you think this is normal, you CLEARLY don't understand the difference between an exact search and a Boolean search.

Soundy

Shouldn't be that big a deal - the word "of" is so rare, it's almost never used... /s

StephenHind

I just thought I'd try this again and it looks like it's working fine for me.

Exact Phrase Search:

If I do an non-exact phrase search then I get lots of unrelated results:

jacrys

Cool so we're just ignoring clear evidence of it not working? Sounds about right. The words exact phrase would imply that the words have to: a) be together b) be in the order searched and c) appear with no more than the exact number of spaces searched for between terms.

That's what exact means. NO vairiation.

Bilsky

it may be partially working for you, but for my use at least, something with a hyphen does not work. See here:

Still the exact same problem I had before. Even with "4012696-3" in quotes, search returns me anything with a "4012696" and everything with a "3". I haven't even tried names or other exact phrases.

jzj

What is really bizarre is consider that the search function is what Google is most known for developing and arguably Gmail is one of the most used apps. So it's not like Google doesn't know how to do search or so few people are using Gmail it's not worth their efforts to improve it's search function. It's just baffling.

Soundy

It's not even a matter of "improving" it as it USED to work properly (and apparently, still does intermittently, based on other comments above)... it's more a matter of un-DIS-improving it.

I guess "if it ain't broke don't fix it" isn't in the Google developers' lexicon.

mnaylor375

Does it work correctly on a different browser?
Mine did not work on Firefox, but just fine on Safari.

Firefox fix: Go into firefox settings using "about:config" and set "security.tls.enable_0rtt_data = false"

Cali369

Weirdly for me, exact search doesn't work in Chrome but does work in Firefox & Bing! Which is crazy because a 'Google recommends using Chrome' box pops up when I open Gmail in Bing!!

TechFuse

Any update on this?

The Gmail search is close to useless. I tried setting up a label, and gave up almost as soon, because it incorporates every other part of the word as if it was the whole word itself. For instance if I was to put a filter with the word "randomness", Gmail also includes the word "random" for God knows what reason. 🤷‍♀️

Prochedary

We're encountering the similar problem. For example, when I search for '928273_NOVA_BOMTEMPS_LGT 316', it shows 6 emails. However, when I search for '928273', it only displays 3 emails. Similarly, when I search for '928273_NOVA_BOMTEMPS', it doesn't show any emails.

The search functionality in Gmail seems very unreliable. Could someone please explain how it works or fix the issue? This is a significant problem for our company when someone is searching for important emails related to orders, and the search function fails to display all relevant emails.

SJoAnneF

I've spent the last hour on forums hoping for a fix for this. It is an absolutely ludicrous issue. Is there any sense of how to raise the issue such that it actually is brought in front of developers? I just don't see how any technical person could find this acceptable.

jzj

Google doesn't have much experience/knowledge with search functions. I think are expectations may be unrealistic especially considering this has only been an issue for 10+ years.

icrew

Honestly, one of the reasons I continue to have macOS mail running on my computer at all times is because the search for Gmail sucks so very much. The lack of exact phrase searching capabilities--and also in the other direction the lack of partial word matches (like searching for "comput" and getting "computer", "computers", and "computing")--in the standard Gmail search is endlessly exasperating.

For me, what I'd really like is a PCRE-compatible search mode, but that's probably way too geeky, way too much to ask!

AlexPine

I can't believe this still isn't fixed.

Skoj

So wait, just to clarify -

There is absolutely no way, whatsoever, to perform an exact search that would bypass the fuzzy feature?

Because I've been trying for way too long to bulk edit e-mails that are similar but different (literally same sender same title, they're duplicated except that one splits their title in half with ": " and the other " - ") and if I understand correctly those efforts were in vain because Google, the company with the most mastery on search engines, has zero option whatsoever to bypass the fuzzy and perform an actual exact search???

cloudroot

Not being able to do an EXAKT search, is horrible.

If it's within quotation marks, then it should be considered and matched against the entire string within the quotes. Nothing else!

Bilsky

Yes, it's been that way for years in most search logic. But at some point google broke it, and now email search for any multi-word term or a hyphen is useless."